Well, you can learn to manage your stress through techniques
like meditation or deep breathing exercises, but before you expend a lot of
effort to manage your stress – maybe you’d be wise to spend a little time
working on identifying exactly what stresses you out… maybe instead of managing
some of that stress you can prevent it before it gets a foothold!

Most of us take a reactive approach to stress control -
letting stress build and then taking steps to mitigate its effects.

But while stress mitigation is important, it is only the
last of 3 steps in a 3-pronged strategy to reduce the impact of life stress.

To really reduce the impact of stress in your life, you need
to:

Work on identifying exactly what types of situations make
you feel stressed - and then modify your behaviors when possible to reduce this
stress.

Develop a lifestyle that raises your stress tolerance
threshold - while you will never be able to eliminate all stressful situations
from your life you can reduce their impact by increasing your stress
resilience. You do this through changes to diet, physical activity levels,
sleep and other lifestyle modifications.

Learn to manage your reaction to stressful events that do
occur.

Too many of us skip steps 1 and 2 and take a reactive-only
approach to stress management with step 3 as our only go-to strategy.

If this describes your approach, try increasing your focus
on steps 1 and 2 and see what a difference that might make to your quality of life.

Here are some ideas on how to get started…

Step One: Identify Your Stress Sources

What stresses you out most?

Is it that twice a day commute? Caring for elderly
relatives?... That stack of bills on the kitchen table?

Stressors are a part of life and you probably can’t
eliminate all, or even most, from your daily routine - that being said, if you
focus carefully on exactly what causes you stress in any given situation, you
may find that small changes to your routines, behaviors or expectations can do
a lot to reduce their impact.

Keep a Stress Diary

To find out what small changes you might make to reduce the
stress in your life, consider keeping a stress diary.

For a few weeks, carry a small notebook with you at all
times. Whenever you find yourself feeling stressed (or soon afterward) write
down:1

What you’re doing

Where you are

Who you’re with

The time

How you’re feeling emotionally

The kinds of thoughts you’re having

What you’re doing to cope with the stress

How you’re feeling physically

After a few weeks, take a close look at your diary and
search for stress patterns:

Notice you often feel physically tired before your stress
level spikes? ...maybe you need a little more sleep.

Notice you’re often with a certain person before or during stress
episodes? ...maybe you could make some changes that would reduce that person’s
stress building impact.

Notice it’s when running late on commutes that your heart
really gets pumping? ...maybe giving yourself an extra 15 minutes in the morning
is all you’d need to do.

Notice that your thoughts are always very pessimistic during
episodes of stress? ...maybe learning a few positive self-talk techniques could
really help a lot.

Notice you feel stressed at work when some aspect of your
job conflicts with your values or beliefs? ...maybe it’s time to make a
significant change at work.

By focusing closely on situations that cause you stress you
may find unexpected patterns. Once you can identify what exactly causes your stress
you may find that making small changes to your daily routine yields big stress
reduction dividends.

Step Two: Make Lifestyle Changes to Reduce Your Stress Vulnerability

You can’t prepare for everything; many stressors are simply
beyond your control.

What you can do though, is increase your resilience to stressors.
They’ll still come at you - but if you’re resilient, they won’t have as much of
an impact on your health and well being.

Making time for yourself a priority, everyday (give yourself
20 minutes a day to do something relaxing that you enjoy)

Step Three: Get Better at Handling Stress

No matter how you try
to eliminate the sources of stress from your life and no matter how you improve
your stress resilience you’re still only human and so you’re still going to
have to deal with unpredictable stress on occasion.

But while you can’t eliminate stress you can control your
reaction to it - and with smarter stress handling you can really do a lot to
minimize its negative impact.

So the next time you feel your blood pressure spiking at
some frustration or other - don’t let stress run rampage, find your way back to
tranquility with one of the following commonly recommended stress management
techniques:

1. Walk away or count to 10 -- With a little self-control you
can choose not to dive into angry situations sure to amp your stress levels.
When you feel yourself getting tense take a moment to calm down before
responding to the situation. Try actually walking away for a moment until you
feel calmer or counting slowly to 10 before responding.3

2. Try deep breathing exercises -- At a primal level, stress
signals the body to get ready to fight or run. Your heart and respiration rate
increase and your blood pressure rises and a host of other processes kick into
gear to get you ready to move with strength and speed if needed.

However, not many of today’s stressful situations call
for physical confrontation or running away…!

Fortunately, you can wrest control from your evolutionary
self through conscious efforts, like deep breathing exercises, which signal an
end to the stressful situation and result in a calming of physical processes
which only serve to heighten our perception of tension and stress.

Try taking a number of deep breaths, making an effort to
inhale and exhale for to a slow count of 5 each.

3. Try progressive muscle relaxation techniques -- just as deep
breathing exercises signal the body to curtail its stress response, so to do
muscle relaxation exercises like progressive muscle relaxation; during which
you make a conscious effort to relax all of the muscles of your body – one muscle
group at a time.

4. Practice mindfulness techniques -- the present reality of
a stressful situation is rarely as bad as we perceive it to be as we intertwine
it with all our worries for the future and memories of the past. If you can
learn to just focus on the here and now what’s stressing you out often gets a
lot less worrisome.

5. Burn off the stress -- Stress gets the body ready to fight
or to flee - so give your body what it wants and try 10 minutes of brisk
walking or stair climbing or any other form aerobic exercise. After a few
minutes of exercise what seemed impossibly stressful can transform into
something reasonably manageable.

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